Dead Men Set No Sails

Watching "On Stranger Tides," the latest entry in the "Pirates of the Caribbean" cannon, if you will, I felt as I often do when I frequent a ride that I love but can tend to make you sick with too many turns.  The first film was certainly an inspired entertainment, the success of which made its first two sequels TOO ambitious in their scope.  Too many characters without fleshed out motivations got drowned by an inflated plot trying to accomplish too much.  This fourth entry then, is refreshing in its goal: just enough characters who all appear to want the same thing, but maybe not for the same reasons.

As the film opens, Jack Sparrow (Johnny Depp) is momentarily distracted from the course he was pursuing at the conclusion of "At World's End."  Here, he is in London saving the neck of his long-time first mate Gibbs (Kevin McNally).  Jack also must discover the identity of his impersonator who is attempting to gather a crew to sail to the fountain of youth, which happens to be on Jack's to-do list.  Pretty soon he finds himself back on course and in league with an old flame, Angelica (Penelope Cruz), her father Blackbeard (Ian McShane) and fast-pursued by, love him or hate him, Captain Barbossa (Geoffrey Rush).  This journey will involve mermaids, light houses, rituals and high-seas adventure that by now has become smooth-sailing for witty Captain Jack.

There are also bits involving a zombie crew on Blackbeard's ship, The Queen Anne's Revenge. Aside from a brief quip about Blackbeard making them that way, the exact nature of the zombies goes unexplained, however, and it feels like a missed opportunity to incorporate some of the supernatural elements that gave the first film its eerie undertones. The rigging of the ship also has a funny way of coming to life via Blackbeard fondling his sword, and this frees up the zombie crew to whip the human mates into shape while the ship sets sail itself.

Throughout the opening passages of the film, it's hard to not think of Jack as a licensed Disney property at this point; a persona rather than a character.  Thankfully, Johnny Depp channels an ambiguousness to Jack that somehow elevates his actions and as the film moves forward, he begins to grow on you once more. Where most characters need motivation for levity, the unique aspect of Sparrow is that you never know what his motivation is, except to find that beloved Black Pearl.  What has happened to his Pearl, I will not reveal, let's just say it must take some skill to have done it.  Barbossa has motivation alright, but it stays hidden until the film's last act and for the fourth time, Geoffrey Rush steals almost every scene he inhabits.  He's just so darn good at being a Pirate at this point that you'd swear he cut his own leg off to get the part.

Gone are the characters played by Orlando Bloom and Keira Knightley, and throughout this movie, it's painfully obvious that they served the purpose of providing the audience empathy.  They are not missed.  A portion of the Will Turner character is evident in a quasi-replacement in the form of a Christian Missionary played by Sam Claflin.  His subdued role never gets in the way of the main action, which swashbuckles it's way through 136 minutes of entertainment.  The second and third installment of the "Pirates" films arguably wear out their welcome on subsequent viewings, although it takes subsequent viewings to understand them. "On Stranger Tides" finds the right balance, I think, by sticking closer to the tone and ambition of the first film and to that degree, it is a success.

Yet when the first film was so good and still prevails as one of the most memorable entertainments of the last decade, was it necessary to give audiences another "Pirates" film so soon?  Perhaps not, but it's a solid effort that is adequately handled by Rob Marshall, who takes over the reigns as director from Gore Verbinski.  I understand another sequel or two are in the works.  That's all yo-ho and savvy and all that but don't the producers who finance these things realize that Disneyland has other rides as well?  And I'm sure that Johnny Depp would like a break at some point to take a shower.

Bad Asgard.

It has been an inexcusable amount of time since I posted a review.  Indeed, perhaps the summer of 2008 filled me with enough excitement to inspire a string of reviews, only to die off as I hurled toward a college graduation, some BIG life changes (like marriage) and a new job.  But I digress.  I feel that with the manifest of headline films spilling out over the next 24 months, I will have my work cut out for me indeed.  I'll begin by examining the most recent Marvel effort and provide thoughts on future titles I'm excited about.

In the pantheon of Comic Book heroes being brought to film, by a variety of directors and studios, "Thor" now thunders into theatres by Paramount Studios, directed by none other than Kenneth Branagh.  I will admit, my knowledge of the Thor mythos was never extensive and my anticipation for the film reflected this.  "Thor" just didn't seem that cool sounding to me.  Couple that with a director, while very well regarded as an actor and director, isn't well known for action blockbusters, and my desire to see this film was not high.  The trailers changed all that.

One thing that became clear from the outset was that wherever Thor might rank in popularity, the director seemed to take him as seriously as the character's ego.  The look of the film was eye-catching in the both the trailers and the various television spots.  What we have here is essentially two films that have to accomplish the same objective within a narrative that expands to a larger Marvel story arc that has been building since "Iron Man" and "The Incredible Hulk" and will culminate with "The Avengers" next summer.

I enjoyed "Thor" quite a bit more than "Iron Man 2," in large part because it stays relatively self-contained.  There is a scene about a third of the way through the film that duplicates a scene from the end credits of "Iron Man 2," but for most of its run time, "Thor" wants to tell its own story.  After a swift opening and brief glimpse of the titular hero landing in the desert, we get sent back through time in the cosmos as the ever-reliable Sir Anthony Hopkins provides an admittedly half-hearted back story of Asgard's role in the universe, and how it relates to us mortals.  Hopkins is almost always welcome for a voice-over, but it is revealed that he is relaying the story to his sons, Thor and Loki, as children, and that fact helps eleviate it's short-comings; wouldn't you explain an extensive history of your immortal lineage in simpler terms to young children?

After watching Thor flex his hammer and muscles on Jotunheim and it's native 'Frost Giants' against his father Odin's (Hopkins) orders, Thor is banished to earth for his arrogant behavior.  Then we catch up to the opening scene where Dr. Erik Selvig (Stellan Skarsgard), Jane Foster (Natalie Portman) and the utterly useless college intern Darcy (Kat Dennings) stumble upon a newly mortalized Thor.  As far as I could tell, Darcy exists in the narrative for 'witty' one-liners and comic relief in a movie that doesn't need the relief.  The movie already has the light-hearted feel of the "Iron Man" pictures and many of the laughs come from Thor's alien behavior on earth or the far more clever lines provided by any number of the main players.  Perhaps the studio felt that Natalie Portman's comely astro-physicist wasn't adequate female representation in a movie dripping with testosterone.  Fair enough, but why add another pretty face just to toss her into the background and give her juvenile sit-com lines?  A minor criticism in a movie that has expert pacing and a narrative that is surprsingly engaging considering it's other-worldy origins.

Part of my early reservations about the film had much to do with the Thor mythos.  Iron Man, Hulk and Captain America are all larger than life characters, but inhabit our home planet and the things that provide them their powers originate from some super-science gone wrong, or right, in Captain America's case.  Then there is Thor, a character that brings to the Avengers an element of the meta-physical realm.  Indeed, the Asgard and Jotunheim passages of the film feel like a more competent version of the "Riddick" films and have an art direction that feels as immortal as it's characters.  The earth passages feel similar in tone to certain portions of "Iron Man" and especially re-call scenes of certain Kryptonian villains destroying small-town Idaho in "Superman 2."  Yet these different elements are blended cohesively by Branagh, who must have understood the aspects of Thor that make him relevant enough to earth to ground him in an ever-growing Marvel story-arc.

'Thor' certainly wouldn't be in my top 5 comic-to-film adaptations.  Yet it's a worthy addition to the rest of the Marvel Avengers team.  It has the good regard to not rely on visual CGI to make a summer entertainment work, but instead polishes the portions of the film that require it.  'Thor' has a heart, and at that heart is essentially a bombastic coming-of-age tale in which Thor has to learn his lesson before teaming up along side the rest of the mighty Avengers.  I suspect a significant portion of that lesson has something to do with the astro-physicist.